Woman in Modern Society | Page 4

but
certainly emotion gives charm and significance to life and distinguishes
modes of thinking. Particularly in the dramatic art, this quality of mind
gives women special excellence. The fact that she more often appeals
to emotion than to reason, as cause for action, in no way marks her as

inferior to man, but simply as different. As Ellen Key says: "There is
nothing more futile than to try to prove the inferiority of woman to man,
unless it be to try to prove her equality."[11]
[10] HELEN BRADFORD THOMPSON, Psychological Norms in Men
and Women, p. 171, University of Chicago Press, 1903.
[11] ELLEN KEY, Love and Ethics, p. 52. New York: Huebsch, 1911.
Most women think in particulars as compared with men. The individual
circumstance seems to them very important; and it is hard for them to
get away from the concrete. On the other hand, a man's thinking is
more impersonal and general; and he is more easily drawn into
abstractions. It is true that woman's domestic life would naturally
develop this quality but we are not now concerned with the question of
origins. Most women find it easy to live from day to day; the man is
more given to systematizing and planning. Thus in offices, men are
more efficient as heads of departments, while women handle details
admirably. In public life we have recently seen thousands of women
eager to depose a United States Senator, accused of polygamy, without
regard to the bearing of the concrete act on constitutional guarantees.
Women have done little with abstract studies like metaphysics; they
have done much with the novel, where ideas are presented in the
concrete and particular.
This habit of dealing with particulars, and disinclination for abstraction,
leads easily to habitual action. It is easy for women to stock up their
lower nerve centers with reflex actions. This, of course, goes along
with the general anabolic characteristics of the sex. Hence women are
the conservers of traditions; rules of conducting social intercourse
appeal to them; and they are the final supporters of theological
dogmas.[12] Women naturally uphold caste, and Daughters of the
Revolution and Colonial Dames flourish on the scantiest foundations of
ancestral excellence. Man, on the other hand, is more radical and
creative. He has perfected most of our inventions; he has painted our
great pictures; carved our great statues; he has written music, while
women have interpreted it.
[12] HELEN B. THOMPSON, Psychological Norms in Men and
Women, p. 171, University of Chicago Press, 1903.
Along with these fixed qualities of action, women have a tendency to
indirection when they advance. We say they have diplomacy, tact and

coquetry, while man is more direct and bald in his methods. Of course,
one easily understands how these qualities may have arisen, since
"fraud is the force of weak natures," and woman has always been
driven to supplement her weakness with tact, from the days of Jael and
Delilah down to the present day adventuress.
These qualities of mind naturally drive women to literary interests
which are concrete, personal and emotional. Men turn more easily than
women to the abstract generalizations of science. Of course, there are
marked exceptions to these general statements, in both sexes. Madame
Curie, who was recently a candidate for the honors of the French
Academy, and who, in 1911, was given the Nobel prize for her
distinguished services to chemistry, is but one of many women who are
famous to-day in the world of science. Still the private life of these
women, as in the case of Sónya Kovalévsky, seems to bear out our
general conclusion. Men, on the other hand, as milliners and editors of
ladies' journals, show marked skill in catering to women's tastes; but on
the whole the differences indicated seem important and widely
diffused.
Another profound difference between men and women is the woman's
greater tendency to periodicity in all her functions and adjustments to
life.[13] In all normal societies the life of the man is fairly regular and
constant from birth to old age. He moves along lines mainly
predetermined by his heredity and his environment, his habits and his
work. Even puberty is less disturbing in its effect upon a boy than upon
a girl; and often by eighteen we can anticipate the life of a young man
with great accuracy. The one element in his life hardest to forecast is
the effect of his love-affairs.
[13] See chapter on Periodicity in G. STANLEY HALL'S Adolescence,
Vol. I, p. 472.
With a woman, it is quite different. As a girl, the period of puberty
produces profound changes; and after that, for more than thirty years
she passes through periodical exaltations and depressions that must
play a large part in determining her health, happiness and efficiency. In
the forties, comes